Financial markets function to bring together buyers and sellers and provide a mechanism for financial instruments to be traded. In recent years the use of electronic trading systems has revolutionized the industry as people have increasingly favored electronic trading systems over the older, manual methods of trading. Financial markets favor electronic trading systems as electronic trading systems offer reduced labor costs, increased accuracy, real time market information and greater versatility in communications.
Electronic trading systems are well known in the art. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,044, issued to Kalmus et al., entitled “Automated Securities Trading System” describes a system for trading securities wherein a centralized computer communicates with trader terminals to obtain the best bid and asked prices in order to implement a trade. Similarly, U.S. Pat. No. 5,136,501, issued to Silverman et al., entitled “Anonymous Matching System” provides an automated matching system where a centralized computer in communication with traders matches bid and ask prices for a trade, subject to the buyers and sellers matching specified criteria. The system described by Silverman et al. is also operable to automatically update the prices based on the best available bids present in the system.